Wednesday, February 28, 2007

When the sun shines they slip into the shade and...

Trivia question, Beatles fans. What was groundbreaking about the May '66 single "Paperback Writer/Rain?" Besides the backwards vocals on "Rain," which is not what I'm looking for, cool though they are.

6 comments:

Johnny Bacardi said...

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say it was their first single that wasn't made up of love songs...

Ben Varkentine said...

We've got a winner! Or at least, we would have if we...I...were giving anything away.

That little tidbit is something I got from the book Faking It: The Quest For Authenticity in Popular Music, which is a pretty good read so far.

Nice to see you, Johnny B.

Anonymous said...

Shit, what wasn't groundbreaking about that. Not only did it have the backwatds vocals (although that was previously done on I'm Only Sleeping), both songs were also groundbreaking in the production techniques. The bass was recorded at a louder volume than previously allowed at EMI, and I'm pretty sure it was the first time they slowed down the tape to drop both songs from G to F# (thus making Ringo's drumming, especially on Rain, even more remarkable).

Johnny Bacardi said...

Same here, Ben! I recently added you to my Bloglines reader; I'm in dire need of upadting my links at the Show...

This may be another first- they made two videos for these songs, to serve as promos. If anybody else did that prior, I don't recall it offhand!

Not that I was there...I was 6.

Anonymous said...

Funny thing about one of those videos (I think it was Rain). McCartney chipped his tooth earlier in the day of the shoot, and didn't get it fixed until a day or two later, so that video is the only place where you can see McCartney with a chipped tooth.

Ben Varkentine said...

Unless, of course, that was when they replaced him with the double.